Dr Jyoti Pooni
Clinical Psychologist
BSc (Hons), DClinPsy
Hi, I’m Jyoti, a Clinical Psychologist specialising in working with children and families. I am warm, caring, highly skilled and passionate about working psychologically with you. I want to help you manage your emotional and behavioural wellbeing and your relationships. My aim is to help you understand yourself and each other better. I want to support you to build on your strengths and skills and to thrive and strive for the best in each other and achieving your potential as individuals and as a family unit. I value a strong therapeutic relationship to create a robust foundation for working together, which I believe will bring about the most change. I aim to provide a supportive and non-judgemental space to achieve this. I offer psychological therapy in North London and online.
Feeling worried, sad, angry and scared, amongst other emotions, is a normal part of life. There will be times in our lives following certain events, that we will feel these emotions more intensely. These emotions are even more typical when you are a child or young person faced with many challenges at home and at school and have not quite had the benefit of the years to help you work out the best way to cope with these feelings for you. Sometimes, these feelings can spiral out of control or go on for longer than we would usually expect and leave a child or young person unable to enjoy life as they did or unable to do things that they used to. They may cause a child or young person to withdraw from family life or friendships or to do things that we would not usually expect, in an effort to communicate that they are not feeling comfortable inside. Sometimes, as parents, no matter how hard we try, we feel at a loss as to how to help.
If, when reading this, you feel that some of these things ring true for your child and family, please get in touch, and we can discuss these challenges and think about what might help in dealing with them. I look forward to working with you to help you bring about these changes.
Dr Jyoti Pooni
I have been working with Children and families for 20 years and qualified as a Clinical Psychologist from University College London (UCL) in 2010. Although qualified to work with people across the lifespan, I have always worked with children and families.
In the NHS, I worked in various child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in the community, outpatient and inpatient settings. I have worked with children individually, with parents, with families as a whole and with children and families in groups. I have specialised in assessing and treating children and young people and their families and in working with adolescents who were thought to be at risk in a number of inpatient units across the North London area. I now have a particular interest in working in the community and have worked in school settings for over ten years, supporting children and young people at various stages of their journey, from those struggling with minor challenges with their emotional wellbeing to those who have struggled more chronically and have needed longer-term help.
I currently work in the charity sector at The Anna Freud Centre. Here, I lead and manage a team of mental health professionals who work within the Council in an inner city of London Borough with children and young people up to the age of 25 years from diverse cultural backgrounds. The team focuses on working alongside and within the community, including with young people with complex trauma. The service aims to make psychological services accessible to the community; therefore, we work in primary and secondary schools, colleges, medical centres and social care settings and offer therapy online. Within Social Care, we work directly with Looked after Children in the fostering and adoption teams. I also offer consultation to Social Workers and reflective practice groups in both Social Care and school settings.
As part of my role at The Anna Freud Centre, I have also worked in Postgraduate Studies at UCL as a lecturer, tutor and placement supervisor to students undertaking their MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice. A two-year programme in which students are taught about child development and how to assess and treat common problems and then supported to apply this learning to a clinical setting through supervised placements.
In my career, I have undertaken various further training to enhance my working knowledge, including training in Parenting Programmes such as Reflective Parenting, The Solihull Approach, delivering Multi-Family Groups in Schools and team training in Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT) to work effectively as a whole team with those individuals with complex networks.
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, London. Pooni J, Ninteman A, Bryant-Waugh R, Nicholls D, Mandy W. (2012). Investigating autism spectrum disorder and autistic traits in early onset eating disorder. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 45(4): 583-91
